Well, it’s 2 days into 2011, and I’m finally concluding the 2010 wrapup. December went out with something of a bang, so I have to reiterate my gratitude for all of the amazingness that I was offered this year, despite my rather vulgar (in retrospect) periodic lamentations to the contrary.

First off, a moment of appreciation for early December snow in Mala Strana:

Next, thanks for having finally accumulated both the great friends and the ingredients to host a Bay Area-style Burrito Bar + Bad Movie Night series (December screening: Tears of the Black Tiger, courtesy of the lovely Martha):

Next, despite being severely down and out with some sort of respiratory malaise brought on by way too much full-moon late night karaoke in Prague, courtesy of other amazing new friends, and having no photographic evidence of said event, I had one of the best nights of my entire time in the Czech Republic singing my lungs out.

I then dragged my profoundly sickly self to gorgeous Switzerland, to spend Christmas with good friends from Bogliasco Joy and Johannes, and post-Christmas with the wonderful Jen and Tristan, in Geneva:

But wait! There’s more! I’m finishing off this roundup from ITALY. What better place to celebrate the end of what turned out to be a pretty phenomenal 2010?

Also: the portable toilet situation here is sublime. This, to be the cover of PPOTWW, Volume II:

Hint: blue flash, upper right ledge.

So it’s almost midnight on January 2. Another day of marauding about, then back to Prague, to begin the hustle-in-earnest to work, pack, and prepare for my return to California. 10 days from now, I’ll be back in the US, wondering what just happened, and happily adjusting to the new adventures that 2011 has to offer. I’m giddy to reconnect with old friends in California, giddy about the new friends I’ve now made in Europe. This year, the professional work will get back on track, too, which I’m more than ready for. But still: friendship! Love! Adventure! Shenanigans! I don’t think any year will ever require less of these things.

Jetset weekend in Amsterdam! It’s amazing how cheap Europe can be if you just buy your tickets enough in advance. Yet another member of the greater Pinoy Art/Academic Mafia, my friend Marco, was doing PhD research in Amsterdam, and since the P and I had been looking for an excuse to go, this was the perfect one! And my old SFAI friend Helen had a rock star solo show that opened at the same time, PLUS it was Amsterdam’s annual Museum Night (where almost all the museums in the city stayed open with special activities until 4 am)…

Towards the end of the month, Woffords Senior finally made it to Prague, and escaped Thanksgiving in the US. It was an absolute treat to get to show them around the Czech Republic, and to take them on an excursion to Bad Schandau and Dresden, too. Right on cue, it finally started snowing while they were in town, which was perfect: they got to experience all the picturesque magic, and none of the tedious sludge.

Yep, cracked out on dutch waffles:

Marco and Woffles in the Flip section of the Tropenmuseum on Museum Night:

Marco, Woff, P, plus the lovely Marta and Elena at the end of Museum Night:

Berlin Trip 4: Filipino Convergence! This time, I went up with Prague friend Deeby, partly as sidekick to his swansong trip before his return to the US, mostly as giddy pinay groupie, to see many of my Manila friends (Manuel, MM, Lena, Bea, Poks, Romeo, Gerry) as well as new Manila friends in their Berlin debut at Freies Museum.

I showed up mid-week while they were in the throes of installation mayhem, and helped put up work, which was so lovely for a couple of reasons. 1: For once, I wasn’t installing my own work, and so I had none of the attendant stress/despair but all of the fun, and 2: I hadn’t installed ANY kind of show in well over a year (the other shows I’d been in I wasn’t present for), and I realized how much I’ve really missed installation. (In Berlin, you install with a cold doner durum lying around, instead of a cold burrito, though.) Hung with the Filipinos and Deeby for a few days, met a bunch of great new Berlin and Hamburg folks, and also got to FINALLY reconnect with Urdujaand Tristan (whom I clicked with in Manila post-Galleon Trade, 2007): even though they live relatively nearby in in Switzerland, we hadn’t found a way to meet up until our mutual Manila friends gave us the perfect excuse.

September involved a bit of scrambling to catch up after the August detour, but hey: any month with a rainstorm that ends in a double-rainbow can’t be all bad. I got off work one afternoon, came around the corner to our building, and this presented itself to me.

Towards the end of the month, the P and I decided to take a quick overnight excursion to Czech/German Switzerland: yeah, it’s absolutely nothing like Switzerland, as far as I can tell, but it was still absolutely gorgeous. The Elbe Valley, at the border of Czech and Germany, turns out to be super-easy to get to, and utterly picturesque.

This was a harder month, for sure. Without going into detail, a family tragedy took the P and I back to the US for a couple of weeks rather abruptly and suddenly. Despite the sad occasion, it was touchingly lovely being back for the first time in a bit, and at the height of a balmy, classic American summer. Cheeseburgers! Root beer floats! Family and friends! And my birthday.

After starting June off still wearing my wool pea coat, July finally brought some sweltering summer weather, just in time for the fun of World Cup football viewing in Old Town Square, and for Worlds Prague 2010 viewing at the legendary, decrepit, Strahov Stadium! Since my Bay Area friends Matt and Arlie are the backbone of World Champions Team Fury, I became something of a Women’s Ultimate groupie for a week or so.

World Ultimate:

World Cup:

And another kind of Ultimate, the amazing Kachna, also came to visit Prague at the end of the month. While we’d met a couple of times through our mutual dear friend Gentlebear, we didn’t know each other super-well. But from the minute I picked him up at the main train station in Prague, right through to the minute we parted ways on Berlin Trip 3 (Art Nerdz Edition), we were thick as thieves. Hours and hours spent wandering and talking about art, community, friendships, and all manner of other subject matter I’d been so hungry for deep conversations around, as well as excessive shutterbugging on both of our behalves, made for an incredibly rich cementing of our friendship.

June was all about The Wah: best friends when we were fourteen, we had fallen out of touch over the years. Somehow, we’d always remained just within in each others’ orbits, but we didn’t realize how much so until she came to visit. We had an amazing meeting of the minds on all manner of levels: and it was striking to share all of our parallel moments. Her visit, in the midst of an icky-sticky heat wave, was the perfect excuse to make encore visits to Karlovy Vary and Berlin.

While the Wah was in town, the fierceness that is Rhacel arrived, as well: having never met her in person, but knowing her sister and having many peeps in the great Pinoy art/academic mafia in common, it was an unexpected treat to finally connect, in Prague, of all places. She, The Wah and I traipsed around together a bit, and then she rather kindly widened my circle of friends in Berlin by making a few introductions, so that when The Wah and I went there, we had quite the social whirlwind. I also finally connected with Vanini, another member of the PA/A mafia, in Berlin: somehow, this month, it all started coming together for me in Europe.

Best Day Ever: discovering that my beloved Žižkov TV Tower had reopened, RIGHT after The Wah and I had found matching house dresses in a thrift store:

May was more about hosting and roosting, sort of. I was finally something like busy with design and illustration work, but still home alone a lot, which was miserable. But! The great SuperGavazza came to visit for a few days, and then Conn and Anděl miraculously returned to Prague on their round-the-world adventure. Neither visit was well-documented by yours truly, which is why you get Giuseppe’s backside at the Vyšehrad cemetery, and 4 people doing all 4 Chicken “dances” from Arrested Development:

It should be noted that Connal was something of a missionary for the Arrested Development television series when he and Anjel came through in November 2009, and swiftly made converts of us savages. By the time that they returned in May, we were full acolytes. If you’ve not yet heard the gospel (e.g., this photo makes no sense), we can send Connal your way.

On a totally unrelated, un-segueway-able note, another lovely thing in May was a community arts event called Blox, which Pavla invited me to. It was a great little festival situated out in one of Prague’s rougher areas, which incorporated some inventive use of shipping containers as gallery spaces, and arts and crafts activities both inside and outside for the community.

Meanwhile, on the reality front, the graphic design and illustration work had been coming in, but I finally had to come to terms with the fact that both the P and I would go crazy if I continued to be home alone all the time, so at the end of the month, I picked up an extra, exceedingly odd, part-time job. The upshot, despite its craziness? Getting to work in one of the loveliest parts of the city.

Despite the fact that much of my Italian riviera reverie was funded, what little money I had still found a way to disappear there, anyway (shocking, I know!), and I despaired of getting to go anywhere again for awhile. Bu-u-t, it turned out, that the Berlin that I’d avoided for so long because I thought it would be expensive turned out not to be, so the P and I went up there around Easter, where everything I rambled about and documented here finally became irresistibly, accessibly, clear to me for the first time.

Meanwhile, back in Prague, the lovely Angela invited the P and I on what was described as an “A Line Pub Crawl”, which was at times more like a scavenger hunt, as certain metro stops on Prague’s A metro line didn’t have anything resembling a pub, so as the night wore on and the crawlers thinned out or became incapacitated, it became more and more difficult to even find a venue. (We joined rather late, so we didn’t get the full brunt of the punishment). I’m not much of a beer drinker, but I do like a nice random adventure, and the evening turned out to be exactly, wonderfully, that. And again: this whole “friends” thing? Having people to do something–anything–with? It’s something to always appreciate. And I appreciate Angela for so many reasons for this. This woman is the consummate hostess/sheep-wrangler: really excellent about inviting, organizing, fun-making in many, many ways.